The First Moment
by unique.normality
Summary: This is a short story about Neville Longbottom and Hannah Abbott's first 'meeting'. I thought that, since they get married, it would be appropriate to write about them.
1. The Save

A tall, slightly pudgy, boy of about sixteen walked through a cold corridor in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. This boy, Neville Longbottom, just finished a detention with none other than Professor Severus Snape. Although Snape was now teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts, a subject Neville was good at thanks to the D.A., he still took away points from Neville or gave him a detention whenever he got an answer wrong (or right for the matter; Snape always said he was cheating).

So since Longbottom was done with cleaning the gum off of the tables (without magic) he was free to go back to his common room in Gryffindor, where he should be. But Neville decided to take a walk through the school, to think about anything and everything: school, his grandmother, his mom and dad, the war, Death Eaters, and so on.

Although this walk was supposed to be somewhat peaceful, one scream from down the hall prevented it from being so.

Neville rounded the corner and found himself in a hall that came off of the Entrance Hall. There he saw a Slytherin seventh year, John Ramie was his name, pinning a fellow sixth year girl to the wall. Hannah Abbott was having her mouth covered, preventing another scream from escaping her lips.

"Oi!" Neville yelled as he pulled his wand from his robe pocket, pointing it at the guy menacingly.

The Slytherin let the girl drop, letting her hit the floor with a thunk, before turning around.

"What do you want?" he said with an evil laugh Neville thought he could only hear in the Muggle movies his grandmother made him watch. "You gonna hex me, eh, Longbottom?"

Neville, had this happened a year or two before, would have known he could not have done anything to this bloke who was twice his size, but now he knew better.

He took a step forward and hit the surprised Ramie in the chest with the stunning spell. A proud smile ran across his face as he thought of what his parents or his grandmother would say if they had seem him.

After taking a millisecond to gloat inwardly, he looked down at the blonde girl crying on the floor.

Neville crouched down in front of her and said, "Are… are you okay?"

The girl jumped and looked up, her face red and tear-stricken.

"Ne-neville, right?" she stammered.

The boy nodded, as he looked confused, wondering how she knew his name.

"Oh! Hannah? From the D. A.?" Neville asked, comprehension showing on his round face.

Hannah Abbott nodded and sniffed.

"Yeah… I… thank you," the Hufflepuff looked up into Neville's eyes, the fear in her eyes flooding out with the tears.

Neville sat down fully up against the wall and smiled, "No problem…. Can I ask you er… what happened?"

"Well… I came up here because I forgot a book in the Great Hall and… then the next thing I knew… he was there and…." The girl cut off as the tears started falling again.

And before he knew it, Hannah threw herself at him, clutching onto his robes as she cried into his chest.

"I d-don't know w-what he was going to… to do," she sobbed after a minute. "Thank you!"

The two sat there for at least an hour before the meows of a cat stopped Neville from rocking the girl back and forth in the middle of the corridor.

Neville stood up and helped the Hufflepuff up too.

"Hannah, are you alright? Okay enough to go back to the kitchens?" Neville asked as they strode away from the footsteps of Filch.

Hannah nodded as she said, "Thank you, again, Neville…. I'll talk to you tomorrow… if that's alright…."

"Yeah, I'd love to… under better circumstances of course," Neville said with a small chuckle.

Hannah smiled, kissed Neville on the cheek, and ran back down the hall, down the stairs towards the bowl of fruit.


	2. The Lake

Neville Longbottom sat at the Gryffindor table at the far end of the Great Hall. He picked at his bacon with his fork, twirling it around while looking anxious. With his chin resting on his hand, he constantly looked up at one of the other long tables, the one full of Hufflepuffs.

"Neville, you okay?" Dean Thomas asked as he looked at his brown-haired friend from across the food.

"Huh," Neville looked up at Dean, acting like he was just woken up from a daydream. "Oh, yeah, I'm fine…. Just looking for someone…."

"Who?" Seamus Finnigan asked, now interested.

Neville turned red as he spluttered out an answer of "a girl".

"A girl? Blimey, Neville, I never knew you had a girlfriend," Dean said, truly surprised.

"Don't sound so amazed! And she's not really my girlfriend. I… I just kinda fancy…." Neville mumbled the last bit as he poked at his eggs, still red.

Dean and Seamus looked at each other and smirked.

"Well?" Dean said after a moment. "Aren't you going to tell us who she is?"

Neville, without thinking, looked up at the Hufflepuff table and turned back as his two friends turned around to see where he was looking.

"A Hufflepuff, eh? Playing your cards in the other houses, are you?" Seamus asked with a grin.

"Am not!" Neville said a little too loudly, "I just… met her yesterday and- well I saved her… and I thought I'd see her today…."

"Saved her?" Dean's eyes went as wide as galleons. "From what?"

Neville sighed deeply, throwing all previous hope of not recollecting last night's adventure out the tall windows of the Hall. He then succumbed to the boy's questions and pressure and told them the story.

As he finished, Dean and Seamus were staring, mouths open. Neville then noticed a few other Gryffindors had been listening and had the same wide-eyed expression.

"Blimey, Neville! I never knew you had it in ya!" Seamus said after at least a minute of astounded silence.

"The girl's bound to like you back after that! So you said she was a Hufflepuff? Which one?" Colin Creevey said as he and the others swiveled around to get a good look at the table in question.

Neville laughed nervously as he muttered the girl's name, finally answering the one question that was being repeated.

"Hannah Abbott!" Dean shouted, causing many people to turn their heads.

"She was in the D. A. wasn't she?" Lee Jordan muttered after they all yelled at Dean to shut up.

"Then why didn't she hex the Slytherin git herself?"

"Are you that thick? She was probably scared! That bloke is about the size of Hagrid, or at least half," Katie Bell said as Neville scoffed at how many people were in on the conversation now, to his dismay.

"Hannah is a blonde, right?" Alicia Spinnet asked as she looked across the room.

Neville nodded and looked at the people in front of him quizzically as they smiled and smirked.

"Kinda tall, pig-tails?" Dean questioned.

Neville kept the confused look on his plump face as he nodded again. He then leaned to look at what Dean, Seamus, Colin, Alicia, Katie, Angelina, and Lee were craning their necks to stare at.

"The Hufflepuff over there that's trying to stare at you discreetly but failing miserably?" Katie snickered.

Neville, upon hearing this, stood up abruptly and saw Hannah look away a moment too late. He then fell back onto the bench, his face Weasley red.

"She's probably just… er… wondering why seven people are watching her from across the room," Neville said, not even trying to believe the words that fell out of his mouth.

"Oh, look," Alicia pointed rudely as Hannah looked at him before being pushed to the exit by her fellow Hufflepuffs.

"Go follow her, Neville, she's basically shouting it out, she wants you to go into the Entrance Hall with her," Lee said as Angelina and Dean nodded.

Neville sank into his seat, shaking his head in his agitation. The Gryffindors around him, however, had different plans as they pulled him up from by his robes, the hands grabbing him from all sides, pushing him towards the doors near the Slytherin table.

As Neville walked through the doorway and into the Entrance Hall, trying to ignore the whoops coming from the table he just vacated, he saw Hannah near the staircase.

He stopped about twenty feet away from her as she smiled slightly.

"Hello, Neville," the Abbott girl muttered as she took one step towards the boy from a different house.

Neville, taking this as a good sign, closed the gap between then, now in front of her. As he smiled a nervous grin he heard some snickers and jerked around just in time to see his friends run back into the Great Hall.

"I'm sorry about them," Neville muttered while rubbing his neck, nodding towards the door where the half a dozen or so Gryffindors had just left.

"It's fine… my friends were the same way, just not as loud," Hannah giggled, sounding nervous, like he was.

"Well, do you w-wanna go for a walk… I mean to get away from them… only if you want to- I-"

Hannah smiled, grabbed his hand and pulled him out the double doors, towards the lake.

After talking on the grounds of Hogwarts for hours, Neville and Hannah walked back into the school, hand in hand.

They walked into the Great Hall and walked past the Slytherin and Ravenclaw tables and came to a stop in front of the Hufflepuff table.

"I had fun on our date, Neville," Hannah said, both turning red at the use of that word, "but it'll look weird if we don't go sit at our right tables…. I'll talk to you later?"

Neville grinned and nodded and before he knew it, Hannah gave him a quick kiss before turning and going to her friend's sides in the middle of the long table.

Neville had a goofy smile on as he walked over to the Gryffindor table and was soon bombarded with arms and hands.

Some slapping him on the back, others ruffling up his hair, most voicing their happiness of his new found girlfriend.

"She's not my girlfriend… yet."

"Yet! You said yet!" Dean whooped while the others laughed.

"Shuddup, Dean," Neville said, trying to sound annoyed but his delighted grin voiced the opposite.

As Neville started putting some food onto his plate, he chatted with Dean, Seamus and the older students.

When he looked up, though he caught the eye of a certain blonde Hufflepuff.

Hannah smiled sweetly at him before her friend nudged her to get her attention. As she talked to Susan Bones and Ernie Macmillan, her eyes kept flicking back up to him, smiling when she caught his again.

Neville felt a smile spread across his face as he watched her before he was hit in the head with a blue pellet.

His hair turned cobalt blue as the small marble-sized ball with "W.W.W." on it hit him. His face turned a red, which went with hair nicely, as he looked up and saw Hannah laughing. This caused Neville to dismiss the prank (courtesy of Lee) and laugh along with everyone else, most who had colorful hairstyles of their own.


	3. AN mistake

(A/N: Holy crap, I just realized I made a mistake with the ages. At two o'clock in the morning, I noticed my mess up and I was wondering if anyone saw it? I saw that I made Neville, Hannah, Dean, and Seamus be in their sixth year while Lee, Angelina, and Alicia are still there, which is wrong. Those three are supposed to have already graduated (Katie is only a year above them, Colin a year below). I can either change it (which I might since it'll annoy me) or just have you readers pretend not to notice. -- Uni)


End file.
